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Lombroso's work on criminal behaviour, now discredited, is nevertheless described by the Science Museum as laying the foundations for modern criminology.

He moved away from the nature of the crime towards the individual's motivation and habits.

In 1862, he began anthropometric measurements of 3,000 soldiers, gradually becoming interested in psychiatry and criminal anthropology.

His 1876 book Criminal Man argued that some people were born criminals - it claimed they were ‘atavistic’, or throwbacks to a primitive stage of evolution.

Lombroso believed ‘primitiveness’ could be read from the bodies and habits of such born criminals - for instance, facial features, body type and tattooing, which he saw as a particular sign of criminality.

Bizarre: A wax-covered head with a tag reading 'Forger', left, and tools used for the theft, right

Death row: Many of the skulls on display in Turin were taken from jails without the family's permission

This emphasis on external marks and ‘primitiveness’ was part of a broader movement in the late 1800s, which believed biology and inheritance explained human behaviour.

A great worry was that European ‘races’ were degenerating - slipping back to an earlier stage of evolution.

From 1866 onwards, the year in which Lombroso began to work as a military doctor, he collected skulls, skeletons, brains and various other types of objects, which formed the core collection of a private museum, first housed at his home in Turin.

To the collection of skulls of soldiers and civilians from all the various regions in Italy, he soon added craniums from far-off lands, and even those of criminals and madmen, which he collected in prisons and asylums.

Strange: Lombroso believed some people were born criminals and had 'primitive' qualities

'Throwback': Lombroso said criminality could be read in a face. Pictured, bandit Gasaparone's skull